A friend popped by yesterday and we picked all the “Sweet 100” cherry tomatoes we could spy – the few last sweet reds, the greens, and the in-betweens. Then we pulled the vines out of the yielding, fragrant soil, found a few more hiding in the slowly withering leaves, and dumped it in the weed bin.

You were good to me, “Sweet 100.” Even though you’re a Midwestern variety I was first tipped to in Iowa. Even though the soil I put you into had been sprinkled with concrete chunks when a contractor washed his wheelbarrow out into your raised bed. Even though I gently cursed your jungle-forming tendencies a time or two. Even if you weren’t “Sungold,” with its insane Brix measurement. You were a sweetie, a hardworking prolific sweetie, and if you occasionally cracked in the heat, well, so did I. You didn’t scoff at my semi-lame attempts at staking you when I was too cheap, er, thrifty to buy you the great big cage you deserved.

Now you’ll be pickles. My friend and I combined our spice stashes, and we each took a bowlful of cherries and we set off on a pickle-along. (Hey, if there can be knit-alongs, there can be pickle-alongs). My fridge contains three jars of little green cherry tomato pickles: One with some Vulcan’s Fire Salt added; one medium (meaning I refrained from messing with the recipe) and one mild, without onion or garlic, just for some other friends who can’t eat those things. I’ll see you again in two weeks, when I’m surrounded with friends, and we’ll toast the final end of the sunny season and the days of garden scheming to come.

Goodbye, tomatoes (and green beans — you weren’t so prolific, but I know you did your best). See you next year.

Oh, and that bulb sale? High Country Gardens. Through midnight tonight. (Monday, Oct. 24). 50 percent off of 50 bulb varieties. Including my two favorites, clay-loving camassia and iris reticulata.